TR Forums

Hey guys,

Long time reader here, in fact I used to Fold for the Gerbils oh so long ago when AMD processors were actually better for some tasks. Quaint, I know.

Well, anyway I am a home musician and have just started a website and submitted my stuff to all of the major digital storefronts. The problem is, I dont play out so my only presence is on the web. I need music reviews, and thats where you all come in. If you all would listen to my stuff, either through downloaded tracks or Youtube vids and agree to do a quick review of the music, I would be grateful. You get free High quality .m4a's of my album, as well as the satisfaction of knowing that you helped a fellow gerbil. I am not just looking for positive reviews, any constructive feedback is welcome also, you can have the free .m4a's as well if you like (though probably not gonna post those reviews on the site .)

What do you all think? Mods? is this kosher?

Not sure how the MODs will respond but I wouldn't mind listening to your music. Have a set of M-Audio BX8a Deluxe monitors that I can listen on as well. Welcome Back!

Sure, why not? I like music.

My brother is a musician. I could pass it along to him (and his friends) and relay his impressions back to you.

DPete27 wrote:

My brother is a musician. I could pass it along to him (and his friends) and relay his impressions back to you.

My brother isn't a musician, but he is a bassist. He'd probably be willing to offer an opinion.

I am not a bassist, but I like music anyway.

Would you mind giving a brief insight into what genre of music we are talking about? What artists would you say inspired your music?

Yeats wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

My brother is a musician. I could pass it along to him (and his friends) and relay his impressions back to you.

My brother isn't a musician, but he is a bassist. He'd probably be willing to offer an opinion.

"Give the drummer some." FZ

Yeats wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

My brother is a musician. I could pass it along to him (and his friends) and relay his impressions back to you.

My brother isn't a musician, but he is a bassist. He'd probably be willing to offer an opinion.

Ha! so funny cause its true. Well maybe not such a good idea to agree too much as he is going to listen to my stuff.

The music is metalish, progrockish, ambientish. Lots of mournful asian instruments. Its a concept album written from a novella that I wrote in college. It sounds like metallica went on a bender with Kitaro.

I am really grateful for the interest and the offers to listen. If you all don't mind I will PM you with a download link.

I'd love a listen!

jovian_litany wrote:

Yeats wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

My brother is a musician. I could pass it along to him (and his friends) and relay his impressions back to you.

My brother isn't a musician, but he is a bassist. He'd probably be willing to offer an opinion.

Ha! so funny cause its true. Well maybe not such a good idea to agree too much as he is going to listen to my stuff.

The music is metalish, progrockish, ambientish. Lots of mournful asian instruments. Its a concept album written from a novella that I wrote in college. It sounds like metallica went on a bender with Kitaro.

I am really grateful for the interest and the offers to listen. If you all don't mind I will PM you with a download link.

So, somehow, Charlie Hayden is not a musician. This amazes me. Perhaps you have some listening to do.

PenGun wrote:

So, somehow, Charlie Hayden is not a musician. This amazes me. Perhaps you have some listening to do.

Oh, c'mon... lighten up. It was meant to be a joke.

Back on-topic, I'd love to have a listen too. From the description it sounds like the sort of thing I'd probably enjoy.

Put Quartets West on right after.

Yeah throw us a ... link.

PenGun wrote:

So, somehow, Charlie Hayden is not a musician. This amazes me. Perhaps you have some listening to do.

Well I agree that I have some listening to do. But grossly generalizing, small town rock bassists are the reason I am a solo act . There are many, many exceptions Mike Myung, Jaco Pastorius, pretty much anyone who is able to play jazz is an excellent musician, but as far as my band history goes, I remain unconvinced. Didn't mean to ruffle feathers, was just good for a laugh.

I will PM away. Thanks for the interest.

Count me in. I'm pretty sure I've been listening to your work on Youtube the last 15-20 minutes. You have a lot of talent.

*sigh* Yeah, it was a joke. My brother's actually quite good, been playing for 30 years and one of his instructors was Dave LaRue. Sadly, my only musical talent is the ability to offer flippant critiques.

Looking forward to listening to your tunes.

jovian_litany wrote:

I am really grateful for the interest and the offers to listen. If you all don't mind I will PM you with a download link.

Thanks for the d/l link. I've listened to four of the tracks, and frankly I can't generate any enthusiasm for the music. Sorry.

Sign me up.

I'll give an honest review from a fan of music in general.

Proggy? Metally? Asian instruments?

Link please.

I will say, I've listened semi-closely to the first 4 songs, and I'm really liking the vibe.

One thing that doesn't appeal to me personally is the over-driven woofer sound. It's kind of like the recording was made with a hand-held next to the speaker.

It also reminds me of Wumpscut, which I actually have a good deal of that music in my archive.

I will listen to the rest as I have time and report back here.

Yeats wrote:

jovian_litany wrote:

I am really grateful for the interest and the offers to listen. If you all don't mind I will PM you with a download link.

Thanks for the d/l link. I've listened to four of the tracks, and frankly I can't generate any enthusiasm for the music. Sorry.

Can I put that on the website?

stratagem wrote:

I will say, I've listened semi-closely to the first 4 songs, and I'm really liking the vibe.

One thing that doesn't appeal to me personally is the over-driven woofer sound. It's kind of like the recording was made with a hand-held next to the speaker.

It also reminds me of Wumpscut, which I actually have a good deal of that music in my archive.

I will listen to the rest as I have time and report back here.

Well you are not too far off as far as the production goes. I had never done any recording or music production before this. The Guitar tracks were taken from the line in on onboard realtek soundcard. The vocals were recorded off a Snowball USB Mic, software is FLStudio. As far as production goes, I did not know what to do with it to get it to sound better. I can laugh at the production because I am better than I was and am getting better.

I will not laugh at the music, the music I think is good. I hoped to get the point across, but you know what they say about good intentions. If I was a punk artist it would be perfect.

Checked out Wumpscut... awesome. Thanks for the comparison.

This is really good stuff. Reminds me of Devin Townsend's work. It sounds great production wise considering what you're working with.

So I caught up with the rest of the tracks.

My only real suggestion is work on getting the recordings a bit cleaner.

Overall I really dig the vibe.

ALiLPinkMonster wrote:

This is really good stuff. Reminds me of Devin Townsend's work. It sounds great production wise considering what you're working with.

That's one hell of a compliment, thanks.

Thanks everybody for all of the constructive feedback as well.

I really like the songs. The contrast between the up-tempo and slower, ambient-style sections works too; it's a bit of a sonic roller coaster, which is a good thing!

However, I also agree with the other posters who noted that the mixing/engineering aspect of the recording still needs a little work. Specifically...

• The bass seems muddy. There's plenty of it there, but it lacks definition.
• The drums seem to be buried too far back in the mix most of the time.
• Really can't get into the vocal distortion effect you used on some of the tracks. I find it overly grating and harsh; to my ears it sounds like bad MP3 compression artifacts. I'm not saying distortion on vocals shouldn't be used for effect, but IMO you ought to either use a different distortion plugin or at least different settings.

And of course, this is all subjective, and a matter of artistic vision. For all I know, you're looking at the above list and thinking, "WTF, I meant to do that!"

It could also be that you're compensating for shortcomings of the speakers/headphones you're using. Have you tried listening on multiple different systems to see how the mix sounds?

just brew it! wrote:

I really like the songs. The contrast between the up-tempo and slower, ambient-style sections works too; it's a bit of a sonic roller coaster, which is a good thing!

However, I also agree with the other posters who noted that the mixing/engineering aspect of the recording still needs a little work. Specifically...

• The bass seems muddy. There's plenty of it there, but it lacks definition.
• The drums seem to be buried too far back in the mix most of the time.
• Really can't get into the vocal distortion effect you used on some of the tracks. I find it overly grating and harsh; to my ears it sounds like bad MP3 compression artifacts. I'm not saying distortion on vocals shouldn't be used for effect, but IMO you ought to either use a different distortion plugin or at least different settings.

And of course, this is all subjective, and a matter of artistic vision. For all I know, you're looking at the above list and thinking, "WTF, I meant to do that!"

It could also be that you're compensating for shortcomings of the speakers/headphones you're using. Have you tried listening on multiple different systems to see how the mix sounds?

He doesn't even have a proper interface, so yeah I'm sure he wants it to sound better but just doesn't have the means to.

By the way, a decent basic USB interface isn't very expensive. You can get an M-Audio model or similar for around $100. I record guitar, so I use a more specialized Zoom G3X guitar effects pedal/USB interface. For $200 it has plenty of great amp models and effects which can be switched on and off through foot controls, and it has a pedal for wah and pitch effects as well as volume control. I'd also highly suggest a decent pair of studio monitors which can be had for as little as $100.

Investing in some good equipment could make your music sound better by several orders of magnitude.

just brew it! wrote:

However, I also agree with the other posters who noted that the mixing/engineering aspect of the recording still needs a little work. Specifically...

• The bass seems muddy. There's plenty of it there, but it lacks definition.
• The drums seem to be buried too far back in the mix most of the time.
• Really can't get into the vocal distortion effect you used on some of the tracks. I find it overly grating and harsh; to my ears it sounds like bad MP3 compression artifacts. I'm not saying distortion on vocals shouldn't be used for effect, but IMO you ought to either use a different distortion plugin or at least different settings.

And of course, this is all subjective, and a matter of artistic vision. For all I know, you're looking at the above list and thinking, "WTF, I meant to do that!"

It could also be that you're compensating for shortcomings of the speakers/headphones you're using. Have you tried listening on multiple different systems to see how the mix sounds?

Thanks for the good words and the constructive criticism. It isn't artistic vision. I recognize my limitations as far as music production goes. I am not a professional, I have limited knowledge and even less time to expand that knowledge. But the way I look at it, the recording and mixing may be flawed, but not many comments about the lack of quality of the music of which I am proud. If I had the finances and recording opportunity given to others this album would be a mild success I think. I don't have that, so it is what it is. The next question to ask would be.... do you go ahead and record something that sounds sub-par (or just plain awful) next to a professional production for fear that people will point out its flaws? To me it is a question of ego, and my ego can handle that. I have recently listened to Casualties of Cool by Devin Townsend and I just want to hang myself... the production will just truly make you weep, but I would rather be a flawed artist than a self conscious critic who killed the idea of doing the album before he even picked up the guitar. This was my first go at this and if I ended up coming off Uwe Boll, I guarantee the next one will be better. Maybe not Peter Jackson better but maybe Evil Dead Sam Raimi better. Regardless, the album got done.

I have invested in a USB Interface, Its a cheapo Alesis but loads better than line in on the RealTek. I have M-Audio monitors now, I used Klipsch Promedia (not Monitors) as monitors for the album.

The vocal artifacts that you say sound like bad MP3 compression I think are from a noise reduction effect needed because of the singing/screeching in my dining room. Yeah it was that ghetto.

I certainly think it is something you can be very proud of as a first album produced on a shoestring (heck, less than shoestring!) budget. The songwriting and musicianship are definitely there, and that's the important part. Something else to consider... many rock albums from the '60s and '70s which are considered classics today were recorded on very primitive (by modern standards) equipment!

just brew it! wrote:

ISomething else to consider... many rock albums from the '60s and '70s which are considered classics today were recorded on very primitive (by modern standards) equipment!

Until Sgt. Pepper [/handwave], The Beatles had all of 4 tracks. That said, if you gave me the choice of a 32-ch board in analog or digital, I'd take the analog board every day. Yes, I'm old.